Iceland supermarket offering £1 reward for reporting shoplifters

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c707rzen2zvo

by speckx • 11 months ago

27 24 11 months ago

mcraiha• 11 months ago

Related, "Currently Ryanair employees are paid around €1.50 for every oversized cabin bag that they identify" https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2025/0721/1524508-ryanair-ba...

so should we coin a new term for this? Maybe snitchnomics?

rurban• 11 months ago

We used to call them Blockwart (block warden), and then the GDR took em over, just renamed them to Abschnittsbevollmächtigter, but also Hausbuchführer or just AKP (Auskunftsperson).

jerlam• 11 months ago

There should be some distinction between a reward paid to employees, which is more like a commission; and one that is paid to customers or the general public, which is more like vigilantism.

metalman• 11 months ago

one further distinction exists in that there are people poor and desperate enough to commit crimes in the hopes of bieng jailed and there by housed and fed, though as they are such meager crimes,are then released, so the 1£ reward they might try and claim would be a significant incentive. it might be easy to dismiss my conjecture, but it is the sort of thing people in compromised situations think up, as they struggle to survive in a world where the logic is very different and in many ways diametricaly opposite.....nothing to loose + something to gain= <

pavel_lishin5• 11 months ago

Everything else aside, it just does not seem like an economic use of my time to find an employee, alert them to shoplifting, and stick around long enough to get the measly £1 credit on a loyalty card.

zahlman2• 11 months ago

Do you also not find it an economic use of your time to, say, comparison shop for groceries?

tomjakubowski• 11 months ago

I'm not sure I understand your point. The savings from comparison shopping will surely be greater than 1 GBP per shopping trip. And practicing that is a skill which you get better at and expend less effort doing over time -- reporting a shoplifter, not so much.

pavel_lishin5• 11 months ago

If it doesn't net me more than a dollar savings, no.

Much like I don't drive an extra 10 minutes to a gas station that costs two cents less per gallon.

cal85• 11 months ago

Also the social penalty for being a grass, the risk of major embarrassment if you’re mistaken or if it can’t be proved, the risk of running into the accused person later outside. It doesn’t make any sense.

kotaKat• 11 months ago

On top of that, if this was in the US, nearly 99% of major retailers have a whole policy and procedure on what constitutes being able to even make a stop on a person suspected of shoplifting.

If visual contact is lost for even a moment, you’ve lost the case instantly, and it takes the correct management to be able to make the observation to qualify for a stop in the first place.

dkiebd• 11 months ago

And here I was thinking this was about a supermarket in Iceland.

pavel_lishin5• 11 months ago

Yeah, I thought this was going to be the delightful Bonus chain, which has the absolute best mascot I've ever seen: https://bonus.is/english/

drcongo2• 11 months ago

Iceland is already one of the cheapest supermarkets in the UK, if someone is shoplifting food from Iceland they're probably both hungry and trapped in poverty. Anyone reporting them for £1 is a piece of shit.

pavel_lishin5• 11 months ago

Remember: if you saw someone shoplifting food, no, you didn't.

comprev• 11 months ago

Which is why the reward is £1 - because the demographic of their customers consider it worth their time.

In ASDA it might be £2

In Tescos it might be £4

In Waitrose it might be £10

tonyedgecombe• 11 months ago

I remember my dad talking about a couple of his coworkers that would go shoplifting during their lunch break. Both employed as well as their partners. Neither could be described as hungry or in poverty.

inglor_cz• 11 months ago

IDK about Iceland, but in the supermarkets I know, people rarely nick food out of hunger. They are mostly targeting more expensive merchandise to sell/exchange for drugs.

giraffe_lady• 11 months ago

Where I am it's kind of in between the two I think. People are not normally shoplifting nutritional staples, which are fairly cheap as far as it goes. It is more like "treats," often for their children, things like name brand cereal, pop tarts, cake mix. And then things that are excluded from SNAP like rotisserie chicken, alcohol, pet food, vitamins, dish & laundry detergent. And of course baby formula when possible. But that has been locked up for decades now.

drcongo2• 11 months ago

There is no expensive merchandise in Iceland.

acheron• 11 months ago

I know HN comments are generally terrible now, but endorsing theft is a new low.

MrGilbert• 11 months ago

I might be out of the loop here, but isn’t £1 a bit on the cheap side? Like… How common is shoplifting in these supermarkets then? Would I be able to, like, spot ten shopliftings while doing my grocery shopping?

Genuine question, as I'm not British.

rekabis• 11 months ago

With prices and profits at an all-time high, and wages at an all time low, if you think you saw someone shoplifting something essential no you didn’t.

Iceland supermarket offering £1 reward for reporting shoplifters

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